Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #364936 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Review
Awarded the President's Choice Award --Literary Committee of the International Napoleonic Society

Synopsis
On 7 September 1812, at Borodino, 75 miles west of Moscow, the armies of the Russian and French empires clashed in one of the climactic battles of the Napoleonic Wars. This horrific - and controversial - contest has fascinated historians ever since. The survival of the Russian army after Borodino was a key factor in Napoleon's eventual defeat and the utter destruction of the French army of 1812. In this thought-provoking new study, Napoleonic historian Alexander Mikaberidze reconsiders the 1812 campaign and retells the terrible story of the Borodino battle as it was seen from the Russian point of view. His original and painstakingly researched investigation of this critical episode in Napoleon's invasion of Russia provides the reader with a fresh perspective on the battle and a broader understanding of the underlying reasons for the eventual Russian triumph.

Customer Reviews

A magnificent account of Napoleon's most terrible battle
Napoleon described Borodino as `the most terrible of all my battles', yet it has been curiously neglected by military historians. Until the dreadful carnage of the First World War, Borodino was perhaps the most savage land battle since Cannae in 216 BC (although there have been battles with higher casualties, the hourly casualty rate at Borodino - 6,500 per hour or 108 men per minute - is truly staggering) . Napoleon claimed it as a victory, yet it was a victory on paper only: all he really gained was a few hundred metres of Russian earth. In spite of terrible losses on both sides, Napoleon failed to destroy the Russian army, which arguably emerged the moral victor. It was at Borodino that the Grande Armee was dealt a mortal blow; it was here that its long death agony began, not to end until the sad remnants of this once mighty force straggled across the Berezina several months later.
Most Western accounts of Borodino have tended - perhaps understandably - to write from the Allied point of view, which gives a rather one-sided picture. Alexander Mikaberidze's account, while doing justice to the Allied side, provides the first truly convincing account of the battle from the Russian viewpoint. As always, Dr Mikaberidze's meticulous research is evident throughout the book; he has made extensive use, not only of published Russian primary sources, but also of Russian archive materials. He paints an objective yet moving and absorbing picture of this most terrible of Napoleon's battles, in the process setting the record straight with regard to many of the myths and misconceptions that have arisen regarding that awful day in September 1812.
Dr Mikaberidze's reputation as a Napoleonic scholar of note will be further enhanced by this magnificent book.

Sources and Style
Any book about military history is ultimately only as good as the sources on which it is based, but the use of good sources alone does not guarantee a successful book. A really good history book must, in addition, present its information in a clear and spirited narrative supported by appropriate source citations, critical analysis of sources, clear maps, quality illustrations and a comprehensive bibliography. Alexander Mikaberidze has written such a book about the Battle of Borodino in 1812. This is the first English-language study of the battle that gives equal weight to Russian as well as French primary sources and the author uses them to tell a complex story with great clarity. The book should be owned by anyone interested in Napoleonic military history.

Definitely worth reading, but let down by abysmal editing
This is certainly not a bad book, but a little effort (and I really mean a little) could have made it a lot better. Alexander Mikaberidze, a native of Georgia (the one in the Caucasus) has decided, with good reason, that accounts of the battle of Borodino have tended to fall into two unsatisfactory categories: those skewed to a French point of view and those influenced by the Russian, especially Soviet-era, myths. The effect in both cases, ironically, has been to cause important Russian-language sources to be deliberately discarded. Since the latter have tended not to be translated out of Russian, the French angle has come to predominate in English-speaking countries. Mikaberidze points out that another early casualty of this bias was the German role in the fighting, which was very significant, with substantial German forces playing a leading role in French operations, while numerous "Russian" commanders were, in fact, Germans. Post-Waterloo, the French painted the Germans out of their picture of the Grande Armee. For their part, Russian writers belittled the role played by "German" officers in the Tsar's army, some of whom were openly dismissed as traitors, for no good reason. Many of the contradictions in the eye-witnesses' accounts, though, must come down to the fact that, on a Napoleonic battlefield, it was impossible to see very far, or very clearly. Men genuinely participated in the same events, but left contradictory recollections. Mikaberidze largely does a very good job of constructing a coherent account out of individual sources that are reluctant to cohere. His list of sources is impressive: many memoirs in Russian, inaccessible to those unfamiliar with the language; French and German sources that also may never before have been cited in an English-language publication. The presentation of quotations from these sources, though, is one of the prime weaknesses of the book, because the translations are often jaw-droppingly inept. Why this is so isn't clear. Mikaberidze has apparently written the book in English and the main text is reasonably well written, if poorly edited. He is clearly familiar at first hand with the range of sources, since that is the whole point of the book. It does appear, though, as if someone with a greatly inferior grasp of English was trusted to provide the translations, some of which are so bad that they seem almost to be the work of not very sophisticated software. They certainly betray further failings in the publisher's approach to editing. Unfortunately, those are not hard to find elsewhere, either. If you believe the caption under his picture, Russian General Dochturov commanded the 6th Corps at the tender age of twenty-two and could look forward to another forty-one years of life. In reality, he was just under fifty-three at Borodino and lived a mere four years more. Bennigsen was born in 1745, not 1735, as claimed. "Voltigeur" is spelled incorrectly under another plate. The topographical name, Semeyonovskoye, is treated to numerous misprints, with inconsistent versions within the same paragraph (there's even a Polish version, at one point). Arguably, the plates don't add a great deal in the way of information, but they are generous. The maps are usually clear, although a map of the manoeuvres preceding Shevardino/Borodino would be useful, as would a map of the early stages of Borodino itself. If you are interested in the battle, or the Napoleonic Wars in general, you should read this, but be prepared to grit your teeth from time to time.